


Cherry Pie

by Matrya



Series: Names of the Damned [2]
Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: Dreams, Food Metaphors, Gen, Vampirism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-13
Updated: 2016-05-13
Packaged: 2018-06-08 02:40:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6835648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Matrya/pseuds/Matrya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are red dreams that aren't quite nightmares. // Angel dreams for twenty years, March '94.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cherry Pie

**Author's Note:**

> fifteen minutes fic about choices that you regret, and don't. blood and food are themes, be warned.

He can smell more than blood. He can hear more than Mandy. In the loneliness, he smells cherry pie and bleach water. The faintest hint of rancid beef lingers near the kitchen doorway and burnt coffee is in every pore of the place. He hears a heart slow and stop, the record click over, the ding of a bus passing outside.

Angel is a lot more than the vampire who drinks on the victim, the higher beings know that, they know the champion's journey.

Angel himself, though, knows he is less for having tasted. He is less for taking advantage. He is less for what he is and has been.

None of that stops the dreams. For twenty years of rat blood and sleeping in dumpsters, the only comfort comes in that dream full of blood and cherry pie, the smell of coffee so strong he can taste it in his sleep after two decades.

Someday, he thinks, he might have the courage to end all this. He might be able to finally drop himself on a broken chair and be free. Other times, he thinks of other some days, where the curse dissolves.

He dreams of those, not nightmares but the worst kind of want that makes him feel almost warm in his belly and too tired to wake up to so much worse a world. Or better a world.

He goes back and forth on that fact rather often, never certain about which is better if only because there is a war of soul and demon inside of him and he has never known which one has the strength to win.

The truth of the matter is that Angel goes back and forth on which one he hopes has the strength. He has spent a hundred years tortured with the knowledge of that his hands and fangs have done. He has spent twenty years relishing in one taste he allowed himself and trying to die over it.

Being torn is worse than what he will one day find out he did to a young man on a submarine when there was a war on and water in his ears. Being torn is a little better than how he will feel one day when a woman he will love will put a sword in him to save the people he will have doomed and avenge those she will miss saving.

So he slips into sleep when the chance comes, in dumpsters and sewers, away from the sun and the people who tempt him with every heartbeat. He slips into the bliss of that moment, with warm blood in his throat and the way cherry pie and coffee augmented that taste to near perfection, close enough to cut out the guilt and self-hatred about doing this to the memory of a man.

Sometimes he keeps himself from slipping, sometimes he tries to justify slipping, sometimes he forgets that he called the cops, sometimes is a mantra for a better man than he ever has hope of being.

And once in a while, less than sometimes but more than never, he dreams of nothing at all and still wakes up with that taste on his tongue and the smell of burnt coffee stuck in his hair.

**Author's Note:**

>  **Memo:** I don't check comments or kudos, but feel free to yell at me on [tumblr](http://matrya.tumblr.com) or [check out](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Matrya) my other writing!


End file.
